by Maureen Orth
“I’d do all this analysis, and talk about him to the FBI, and they’d say, ‘What we’re really interested in is who he’d get in touch with and where he’d go.’ I said, ‘There are only two coasts that stay warm. And warn the owners of 7-Eleven’s if anyone’s buying Fritos and milk … He’d go a day and a half without any real meals—just Fritos and milk, and then he’d have a sub.’”
In early June, Norman Blachford also told the FBI that Andrew might be in Miami, particularly the South Beach area. Blachford had no specific information to that effect—it was strictly a hunch—but Andrew had told him that he had visited the area, and Blachford felt that it would be a logical place for Andrew to blend in. Blachford’s suggestion does not appear in FBI files either.
In retrospect, the manhunt for Andrew Cunanan appears to have been riddled with missed opportunities. Although Merrill, Doug Stubblefield, and Eli Gould all say that they had mentioned to the FBI Andrew’s knowing Versace before Versace’s death, Versace’s name simply does not appear in any FBI file prior to his murder. Even more curious is the idea that just as they professed not to be interested in learning about Andrew’s character for their fugitive investigation, some of the top FBI officials involved in the Cunanan manhunt maintained that his sexual orientation didn’t really count either. “The media keeps linking his sexual preferences with his actions. We don’t care,” said Paul Philip, the tall, elegant African-American head of the Miami FBI during the Cunanan investigation. “You can’t take the issue of sex and say it’s the basis of the investigation. Being gay was not emphasized. It’s not all that clear being gay had anything to do with it.”
Philip argues, “The interest in Cunanan and the grave digger has nothing to do with sex. In Minnesota they found him using a .40 millimeter gun—that’s the weapon. The weapon has nothing to do with sex. The car has nothing to do with sex. You can’t base a fugitive investigation on sexual orientation.” Rather, he says, “if you focused on his sex or what he’s done in the past, you’d be focusing on those places. Bank robbers don’t rob banks where they ultimately hide. I’m saying down here we didn’t see evidence of the same actions you’d see in San Diego. He wasn’t doing whatever he was doing in San Diego down here.”
One of the reasons Philip believes Andrew’s behavior had changed was that law enforcement never really had a clue as to the extent of Andrew’s drug use and drug dealing in San Diego; there was never any emphasis placed on how habitual use of crystal meth and cocaine, particularly in combination, can contribute to psychosis. Yet Peter Ahearn, the number two in the San Diego FBI, says, “We have the third-largest number of bank robbers in the nation, just over three hundred last year, and half of the people are tweakers. They were users of crystal meth, robbing to feed their habit.” Greg Jones, the Miami FBI agent in charge of the Cunanan investigation, says, “I never heard of him being a petty drug dealer.” Kevin Rickett stated flatly, “That serves no purpose for us.”
Perhaps the FBI’s reluctance to admit that being gay was integral to Andrew’s killing spree, not to mention whom he targeted, is due to a general unease that is currently being addressed but that still persists when law enforcement has to deal with homosexuals. “We used to call them ‘fagicides,’” a Florida investigator told me. Not surprisingly, there is prejudice on both sides. Constance Potter, coordinator of the Minneapolis branch of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, says, “Seventy-five percent of gays would not call law enforcement [regarding crimes]. They may not be out. They may feel shame or guilt … There’s also a lot of distrust and a history of slow movement and failure to respond.” Traditionally, a pattern of us versus them has existed between police and gays. “We talked to people who told us, even after Cunanan killed four people, ‘I’ll give him any safe haven he needs,’” says Peter Ahearn of the San Diego FBI.
“This is a lifestyle issue within the gay community,” states Darryl Cooper, the former chairman of Gay Men and Lesbians Opposing Violence. “A lot of us are capable of moving through the mainstream, but there are segments of the community who aren’t. Some of them have had bad experiences with straight people and don’t want to be involved with them. Some have grown up in small towns where being gay is considered a huge stigma, so the only way to have contact with other gays is to have illicit sex in bars, in parks, in the dark, so they learn that’s the only way to be gay.” Cops who bust such areas are not natural allies. Cooper says, “It’s always been a fear in gay communities when gay people are murdered that police do not do a good job. A lot of times they ignore the murder or do not pursue the murderer.”
To prevent prejudice and foster awareness, a coalition of gay and lesbian antiviolence groups began monitoring Andrew’s case early on. “When Cunanan broke, we started having weekly conference calls among fifteen cities,” Cooper explains. “Cunanan didn’t come to the nation’s attention until Chicago, which triggered a nationwide alert.” Even though all major cities on both coasts and places such as Detroit and El Paso were involved in the calls, Jacksonville was the only city in Florida to participate. Miami, for example, was not sufficiently organized. “How do we create a community,” asks Eugene Patron, formerly a gay issues columnist with the Miami Herald, “when everything you see is geared to the visitor who comes down here to get his rocks off?”
ON JUNE 12, Andrew became the 449th person to make the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. In large part this was due to the efforts of the America’s Most Wanted TV program, which has become a highly effective tool for the capture of FBI fugitives. AMW continued to feature Andrew’s case and nudged the FBI into action. “We really had to push. He became a special addition to the Ten Most Wanted,” says Bob Long, the media spokesman of the Chicago FBI office who often works with the show. “I think he made number eleven.”
For the FBI to move with this speed was a break from its usual practice. “We did everything to get him on the Top Ten, and that happened very quickly,” says FBI Deputy Assistant Director Roger Wheeler, who adds that it typically takes at least six weeks “to get somebody on the Top Ten who isn’t a Tim McVeigh or Terry Nichols or someone like that.” FBI headquarters in Washington felt that it had scored a publicity coup. “When Cunanan became part of the Top Ten list, it was a major event,” says FBI Fugitive Publicity Unit spokesman Ed Cogswell. The FBI’s former number two, William Esposito, says, “If you’re on the Top Ten, it means you’re a very dangerous person, and you’re known not only to the FBI but to all of law enforcement. Your picture is plastered all over the place.” He adds, “Any leads in the Bureau involving Top Ten people are supposed to be covered within the hour.”
Down in the trenches, however, the same gung ho enthusiasm is not always felt. Furthermore, the FBI guards its territory, often discouraging cooperation with local law enforcement. “Prior to Versace, all we got were two crappy pictures like faxes,” says Christine Quinn, who directs the New York Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. “The FBI certainly wasn’t working with the New York Police Department. I had to get the FBI to give the NYPD Ten Most Wanted pictures. I had asked the FBI for pictures because we had posted a ten-thousand-dollar reward for Cunanan’s capture. First we started using pictures from the newspaper and the Internet. Then they finally got a series of pictures which were improved. They were very resistant giving those photos to NYPD.”
I was interviewing Bob Tichich in the Minneapolis homicide bureau when the newly minted Ten Most Wanted poster was dropped on his desk. “What does this mean exactly?” I asked. “It means, according to the guys over in the task force, a lot more paperwork,” Tichich answered. “Well, who is in charge of the investigation?” I wanted to know. “That’s a good question,” Tichich answered.
Nearer to headquarters in Washington, D.C., however, the FBI was a model of cooperation with the gay community. “It was very reassuring to the gay population here in D.C. We had access to the FBI,” says Darryl Cooper. “Local agent Daniel Mingione was completely accessible. He came by and gave us pos
ters of Cunanan before he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. He even offered to help us put them up.”
Yet the twisted tale of what happened to Cunanan fliers in the Miami FBI office is one of the most interesting hot potatoes of the entire manhunt. The Miami FBI office is one of the busiest in the country, since Miami is at the hub of the drug wars. Drug money is so ubiquitous there that the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami was found to be unknowingly laundering Colombian cartel money through a housing-loan program. Furthermore, corruption is so rife that in 1997 the Miami mayor’s election was annulled. Therefore, the announcement of a “gay serial killer” on the FBI’s Top Ten list was hardly front-page news. “The Miami Herald did a story, and nobody paid attention,” says Paul Philip defensively.
“To paint a picture solely on Cunanan without understanding the enormity of what we do is unfair,” charges Deputy Special Agent Paul Mallett, the number two of the Miami FBI. “Our number-one priority is organized crime and drugs. We have ten squads with a hundred agents and it’s hopelessly inadequate. Number two is white-collar crime—medicare, health care, fraud by wire, mail fraud, bribery, and embezzlement. Number three is violent crimes, which Cunanan fell into. Number four is national security—intelligence and terrorism.” At any given time the Bureau is working on 2,500 cases, and Mallett says between four hundred and five hundred new leads open up every month. “Cunanan was one of those. Typically, what happens, because of the notoriety of the guy’s actions, is that leads go out to all offices—shotgun leads. There’s a vague chance you might hit on something: ‘Contact all possible sources.’
“No one knew where he was, so [the lead] goes to all fifty-six offices. No one knew he was coming here,” Mallett continues. “What we were doing, we were out contacting people in case he shows up.” Mallett’s view differs from that of Paul Philip, who in some interviews, including to me, has stated that the FBI had thought Andrew was in South Florida since May. Either way, the Cunanan investigation in Miami was hardly considered high priority. Accordingly, it was assigned to Keith Evans, a rookie with thirteen months’ experience. “They give Top Ten cases to rookies,” says a Miami U.S. attorney, “because you never find them, or they turn themselves in.”
Evans is a clean-shaven and stocky thirty-one-year-old, a former local cop from Plantation, Florida. During the third week in May, Philip says, the Miami office received a tip that Cunanan might be in West Palm Beach, seventy-five miles away. A construction site where someone resembling Andrew had worked was staked out, and a suspect was taken in for questioning and released—“washed out” of the lineup, in FBI lingo. Evans, who worked with a female partner, Talarah Gruber, decided that Fort Lauderdale was the best place to look for Andrew, because the FBI had gotten a tip that there would be a Gamma Mu fly-in there, and the Bureau knew Andrew had ties to the group. Fort Lauderdale also had a large gay population, but it tended to be older and more conservative than that of South Beach. According to Ocean Drive magazine editor Glenn Albin, “Fort Lauderdale is based on an Anglo, All-American, very white-bread mentality. They have S&M and leather. Any older established [gay] community has that. Their gay community grew up in a much more closeted society.”
In May, Keith Evans made an obligatory visit to the Miami Beach police about Andrew. He had one flier with a photo of Andrew on it with him, and spoke to Sergeant Lori Wieder, an openly gay police officer, one of two on the Miami Beach force then. He asked her help in contacting local gay groups for an undercover operation to infiltrate gay clubs in the area. “He was very unfamiliar with the gay community in general,” says Wieder. “I supplied him with information—gay newspapers and lists of clubs. He had one flier. I made a copy.” Wieder’s instinct was to get the fliers out to gay media and clubs so that they could see what Andrew looked like. But Evans said no. “He didn’t want me to distribute fliers,” Wieder says.
Getting the word out immediately was also the first idea that came to homicide detective Paul Scrimshaw when he was introduced to Evans. Ironically, two months later, Scrimshaw, a thoughtful ex-schoolteacher on his way to retirement, was put in charge of the Versace case. But Evans also made it clear to Scrimshaw that he didn’t want publicity about Andrew, that he preferred to keep the investigation low key. Scrimshaw, both sardonic and laconic, is given to wearing leather vests and brushing his longish hair straight back. He projects the classic cop attitude of having seen it all and thinks much of it is foolish. “The FBI came here, and talked to us, and we said, ‘Let’s get this out.’ But the FBI said, ‘No, no, we want to soft-pedal this,’” Scrimshaw says. “If you come to the police station and say, ‘We want this guy,’ and we say, ‘OK, let’s put the fliers out,’ and he says, ‘No, no, no, we got leads,’ I take it he’s saying that because he wants the glory of it—he’s thinking, I want to do the grab.” By May 16, Scrimshaw remembers, “the Cunanan flier was on the homicide bureau’s bulletin board. It was just one more flier.” One more flier that nobody looked at for two entire months.
According to Lieutenant Carlos Noriega, the Miami Beach supervisor of the Versace murder investigation, “Keith wanted to speak to the gay community to further follow up and to infiltrate a ‘secret society’ and gay underworld escort services.” Lori Wieder put Evans in touch with gay city official Dennis Leyva in South Beach, who could facilitate an introduction to the clubs. He was also referred to the Broward County sheriff’s office and met gay activist Dilia Loe in Fort Lauderdale.
Leyva is an ebullient and well-connected music-and-entertainment coordinator for the city of Miami. He had already read about Cunanan in the national media. “Three FBI agents took me into a room, and they explained to me the whole gig on the murders. They suspected Cunanan was here because of that fly-in party that Gamma Mu does.” The FBI showed Leyva a Gamma Mu newsletter. “They asked me about the club scene, what was happening in South Beach. I said I didn’t think anyone looking to hit on older men would be here—it’s a very young gay scene. Fort Lauderdale is older and more closeted, with piano bars. I explained the bars here and said, ‘Either it’s Twist or the Boardwalk, if that’s what he was into—meeting older men.’ Discos were hard places to strike up a conversation. They then asked if I would take them around town as a cover. I did tell them I could facilitate a meeting with all local gay and lesbian organizations. In the back of my mind, though, I was thinking I didn’t want to start hysteria. [But] they said they were here to case the place out, be low key. They never followed up with me.”
In May, Keith Evans also called Dilia Loe, who runs the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Fort Lauderdale. “They wanted to set up a time to meet, and were trying to decide how to approach the gay community. They wanted names of leaders and how to get in touch with certain people,” she says. The meeting finally took place in mid-June with Evans and his partner, Talarah Gruber. Loe gave them a list of bars, gay publications, people they should contact. Evans said he would give Loe a flier to put in her newsletter.
“He was very specific about who they wanted to talk to,” says Loe. “He asked about Gamma Mu, also affluent gay men and leather clubs.” The FBI told her they had found a Gamma Mu letterhead with a Fort Lauderdale address in one of Cunanan’s vehicles. Loe says, “They said that was the only lead they had to South Florida.” At the time Loe had never heard of Gamma Mu, but she later verified that it did exist and gave them the phone number of the founder, Cliff Pettit, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. Again Keith Evans promised to supply Loe with fliers. A week later Loe talked to Deputy Barbara Stewart of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department, which was working with the FBI. She too said they were distributing fliers, but Loe never got any. On yet another occasion, Talarah Gruber promised Loe that she’d get fliers, but it didn’t happen until two days after Versace died. Finally, Loe created her own flier and began to contact gay publications about the FBI’s visit so that they could warn the community.
Yet there was only one mention of Andrew Cunanan in Miami, in the local Miami gay press, a
nd no fliers were distributed to gay establishments until after Versace’s murder. “There were no fliers. They were not on Lincoln Road, they were not on Washington Avenue. They were not in clubs,” says Dennis Leyva. “I do go out a lot, and I live here. It happened after the fact of Versace’s murder. The FBI was here undercover and wanted to see if they could catch him.” Donna Cyrus, a manager of Club Body Tech, one of South Beach’s most popular gyms, says, “We were never warned by the police or the FBI. I personally had to go down to the police station and get wanted pictures two days after [the Versace murder] happened. Here of all places. Versace lives one block away. Yet there were no signs in storefronts.”
It wasn’t until July 2, 1997, when Scoop magazine, a weekly gay entertainment guide in South Florida, published a story under the headline “Wanted by the FBI! Accused Killer Has Many Faces” that the gay media in South Florida ran anything at all about Andrew. Scoop issued a full-page warning by Dan Pryor, a local radio reporter, who got his information from the Internet and decided to write the piece because of “the high concentration of affluent gays in South Florida.” There were no other warnings.
Had the FBI made the decision to work more openly with the gay community in South Beach, rather than taking its cue from Paul Philip’s opinion that Andrew’s sexual preference was not relevant to its investigation, it could have benefited from the unusual insight of the Miami Beach Police Department, which has an ongoing outreach program to the gay community. Gary Knight, an arts executive and father of two sons, who relocated to South Beach from Miami in 1989 when he came out, helped shape a program begun by Police Chief Richard Barreto and led by two gay psychologists to give each Miami Beach police officer four hours of sensitivity and diversity training. Knight worked to get more cops on the streets, especially on weekend nights, and to sponsor ride-alongs for any gays who wished to accompany the police on midnight patrols. Over a hundred gays accepted the offer. “Everybody comes back with an enormous respect for what the police have to do,” Knight says. “South Beach is really Iowa City with a New York City nightlife—a little village that becomes Manhattan at night. This really is a very tough street scene here.”
